Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Book Review: Dancing on Broken Glass by Ka Hancock (Whitney Finalist)

Title: Dancing on Broken Glass
Author: Ka Hancock
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Whitney Finalist
This book would be rated: PG-13 for some language, sexual references and adult themes

Some people might consider Lucy and Mickey to be unlucky souls. She was orphaned as a teenager and had breast cancer in her twenties. He has bipolar disorder. But they both feel lucky to have found each other. That doesn't mean that they'd do something as reckless as bring a child with their genetic time bombs into the world. But after ten years of marriage and a tubal ligation, Lucy learns that she's pregnant, and their whole lives shift.

Dancing on Broken Glass is what I want Jodi Picoult's novels to be. Yes, it's heart-wrenching, a story that's too painful to be believed in places, but Hancock manages to tell the story in a way that doesn't feel overdone or manipulative. Her experience as a nurse seems to have prepared her well to write a story where characters suffer from debilitating physical and mental illnesses, and to do it with compassion and strength. This was one of my favorite reads of the Whitney finalists, and I look forward to reading more of Hancock's work.

1 comment:

Luisa Perkins said...

I thought this one was the best of the year. There. I said it out loud. Sort of.